September 2014 Archives

September 29, 2014 – February 20, 2015 Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library The Arts of the Book Collection, part of the Special Collections of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, strives to document the many trends in the wide-ranging field of book arts. One such trend comprises artists who challenge the traditional codex format with unexpected sculptural renderings. Yet, these works often preserve other conventions of the book, such as narrative and reader interaction. Sculptural book objects allow readers to appreciate the book for its physical format as well as its content. Such an experience informs future interactions with codex and non-codex formats alike. This exhibition is a companion to the student-curated exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery: Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection, on view from November 7, 2014–February 1, 2015. Additionally, Beyond the Codex is a companion to exhibit Connecticut (un) Bound at the local non-profit gallery Artspace, also on view starting November 7, 2014 and running through January 2015. The Haas Family Arts Library actively supports the research of the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) in addition to arts-area research by members of the Yale, national, and international communities. Beyond the Codex features works in the Arts Library’s collection by artists selected for inclusion in Odd Volumes and Connecticut (un) Bound as well as artists not represented at YUAG, thus highlighting the complementary nature of the Arts of the Book Collection and the Art Gallery’s Allan Chasanoff Collection. This exhibition is free and open to the public in the William H. Wright Exhibit Area of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library. Enter through the Loria Center at 190 York Street. Public hours are 8:30am to 5pm, Monday through Friday. The Yale community can access the exhibition anytime the Haas Family Arts Library is open. Contact Jae Rossman, Assistant Director for Special Collections at the Arts Library, for more information: jae.rossman@yale.edu or 203-432-4439

Tuesday, October 7, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall How are academic research libraries changing in the wake of widespread digitization, and where does this leave nineteenth-century books? Out of copyright, non-rare, and often fragile due to poor paper quality, these books are both richly served and particularly imperiled in the new media ecosystem; as scenes of evidence, they are at once exposed and occluded by the digitization of our library collections. In this talk, Andrew Stauffer, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, focuses primarily on personal marginalia in copies of books in the circulating collections, demonstrating the importance of individual copies to our understanding of nineteenth-century books and their readers. A massive horizon of opportunity is now opening for humanists to trace the history of language, of ideas, of books, and of reading via automated searches and visualizations of the global digital library. Yet individual copies are under a general downward pressure in this new dispensation. Digitized archives will reveal wonders. Now, in concert with the digital transformation of the archive, we must also give sustained attention to the material record of nineteenth century reading before it disappears from our academic research libraries for good. All are welcome to this SCOPA Forum.

The Arts of the Book Collection, part of the Special Collections at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, strives to document the many trends in the wide-ranging field of book arts. One such trend comprises artists who challenge the traditional codex format with unexpected sculptural renderings. Yet, these works often preserve other conventions of the book, such as narrative and reader interaction. Sculptural book objects allow readers to appreciate the book for its physical format as well as its content. Such an experience informs future interactions with codex and non-codex formats alike.

This exhibition is a companion to the student-curated exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery: Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection, on view from November 7, 2014 - February 1, 2015. Additionally, Beyond the Codex is a companion to Connecticut (un)Bound at the local non-profit gallery Artspace, on view starting November 7, 2014 and running through January 2015. The Haas Family Arts Library actively supports the research of the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) in addition to arts-area research by member of the Yale, national, and international communities. Beyond the Codex features works in the Arts Library's collections by artists selected for inclusion in Odd Volumes and Connecticut (un)Bound as well as artists not represented at YUAG, thus highlighting the complementary nature of the Arts of the Book Collection and the YUAG's Allan Chasanoff Collection.

Beyond the Codex is free and open to the public in the William H. Wright Exhibit Area in the lower level of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library.  Enter through the Loria Center at 190 York Street.  Public access hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5pm.  The Yale community can see the exhibit any time the library is open, seven days a week.

The Yale Library is delighted to offer a lecture and reception featuring Professor Carl Haber, Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and 2013 MacArthur Fellow. The event is sponsored by the Richard Warren Jr. (B.A. 1959) Fund for the Preservation and Promotion of Music. 

Sound was first recorded and reproduced by Thomas Edison in 1877. Until about 1950, when magnetic tape use became common, most recordings were made on mechanical media such as wax, foil, shellac, lacquer, and plastic. Some of these older recordings contain material of great historical interest, sometimes in obsolete formats, and are damaged, decaying, or are now considered too delicate to play.

Unlike print and latent imagescanning, the playback of mechanical sound carriers has been an inherently invasive process. Recently, a series of techniques, based upon non-contact optical metrology and image processing, have been applied to create and analyze high resolution digital surface profiles of these materials. Numerical methods may be used to emulate the stylus motion through such a profile in order to reconstruct the recorded sound. This approach, and current results, including studies of some of the earliest known sound recordings, are the focus of this talk and will be illustrated with sounds and images. 

Carl Haber is an experimental physicist who received his Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia University and is a Senior Scientist in the Physics Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Read more here.

The latest addition to Digital Theatre Plus is Henrik Ibsen’s GHOSTS, directed by Richard Eyre for the Almeida Theatre and starring Lesley Manville in an acclaimed performance as Helene Alving. Digital Theatre Plus also now includes videos of recent performances from the Royal Opera House and historic recordings from the Broadway Theatre Archive. More information about electronic resources is available on the Drama LibGuide.

Wednesday, September 24, 12:00 pm Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT Join us for a tour of 3 fascinating and diverse Medical Library exhibits – "The Body as a Machine", "Vesalius at 500", and "Dangers of Underage Drinking and other Historical Posters." The tour will be led by Melissa Grafe, Librarian for Medical History, and Susan Wheeler, Curator at the Medical Library. As part of the tour, the cases will be opened to view the objects. Please meet at the circulation desk. You may RSVP to historical.library@yale.edu or at 203 785-4354.

Tuesday, October 7th, 4:00 pm
Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall

The Yale Library is delighted to offer a lecture and reception featuring Professor Carl Haber, Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. The event is sponsored by the Richard Warren Jr. (B.A. 1959) Fund for the Preservation and Promotion of Music.

Sound was first recorded and reproduced by Thomas Edison in 1877. Until about 1950, when magnetic tape use became common, most recordings were made on mechanical media such as wax, foil, shellac, lacquer, and plastic. Some of these older recordings contain material of great historical interest, sometimes in obsolete formats, and are damaged, decaying, or are now considered too delicate to play.

Unlike print and latent imagescanning, the playback of mechanical sound carriers has been an inherently invasive process. Recently, a series of techniques, based upon non-contact optical metrology and image processing, have been applied to create and analyze high resolution digital surface profiles of these materials. Numerical methods may be used to emulate the stylus motion through such a profile in order to reconstruct the recorded sound. This approach, and current results, including studies of some of the earliest known sound recordings, are the focus of this talk and will be illustrated with sounds and images.

Carl Haber is an experimental physicist who received his Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia University and is a Senior Scientist in the Physics Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His career has focused on the development of instrumentation and methods for detecting and measuring particles created at high energy colliders, including Fermilab in the United States and at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. Since 2002 he, and his colleagues, have also been involved in aspects of preservation science, applying methods of precision optical metrology and data analysis to early recorded sound restoration. He is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

All are welcome to the lecture.

The Bibliographical Press was founded in 1927 by University Printer Carl P. Rollins and Professor of English Arthur Ellicott Case as a way to teach students of early literature how the books they studied were physically created. With support from University Librarian Andrew Keough, The Bibliographical Press has been part of Sterling Memorial Library since its opening in 1931.

During the Nave Open House on September 18 from 3 to 5 pm, see a 19th century Albion hand press in action, printing a keepsake from hand set metal type. Keepsakes available while supplies last.